Read All About It (Online)! Accessing Digitized Historical German Newspapers

Articles from historical newspapers typically play an important role in primary-source document collections in both printed and digital form. GHDI is no exception: it presently includes hundreds of texts from German newspapers dating from the early nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. During the course of the relaunch, scores of new German newspaper articles will be added to this existing base. Likewise, newspaper articles will feature prominently in the German History Intersections project.

Many German research libraries have recently completed ambitious newspaper digitization projects, often with the support of the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or DFG). These projects offer new access to German historical newspapers and thus make it possible for students, scholars, and researchers from all over the world to work with these sources firsthand. To spread the word about these efforts, we recently asked GHI librarian Anna Maria Boss to point out some key newspaper digitization projects based in German libraries and other institutions. She recommended the following:

The Staatsbibliothek Berlin digitized its Prussian political press collection (from the 1870s on) and three GDR newspapers as part of the ZEFYS Zeitungsinformationssystem project: http://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/en/ (Registration is required but is free and not limited to Germans.)

A new portal offering access to digital copies of local and regional newspapers from North Rhine-Westphalia (from c. 1801 to 1945) was recently launched: https://zeitpunkt.nrw/ (It is still a work in progress, but new issues and titles will be added over time.)

The European Library has a search portal for digitized historical newspapers in various European countries (including German-speaking Europe). The project is online but has not been updated since December 2016: http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/newspapers

Anna Maria Boss has been the head librarian at the GHI since 2016. She received her degree in library science from the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences (HTWK) and worked as a librarian in various institutions of the German military, most recently as a reference librarian and information specialist, before coming to Washington.